Purple Hearts

by Michael Grant

  The German is bigger, stronger, and more experienced at hand-to-hand combat. Rainy knows she will lose if she doesn’t end this quickly. But how? With what?

  But then a knife appears, one of the fallen steak knives. Rainy dives. The German dives atop her, hands scrabbling to grab hers. Rainy stabs the knife at his side, but the blade is too weak to penetrate his uniform and the tip breaks off. He shifts his grip, wrapping big hands around her neck. She stabs the broken blade into his neck, not a fatal cut, but enough to cause him to rear back, roaring curses.

  Rainy kicks wildly, rolls away, uses a table to pull herself up, grabs a chair, and slams it against him, like something out of a western barroom brawl. It does not break, rather it bounces away, having done no real damage.

  Rainy grabs a wine bottle from the German’s table and smashes it against his shoulder, meaning to go for his head. He kicks, hitting her shin. She swings again and this time catches the German on the bridge of his nose. Blood gushes, filling his mouth and spilling out.

  He is stunned but still dangerous. Rainy takes her time with the next blow, bringing the bottle hard against his temple. He drops to his knees, and Rainy pushes him onto his back, straddles him, fights past his flailing hands, finds the handle of the knife, and begins sawing the short blade back and forth across his throat. Like she’s trying to slice a tough roast.

  The last of the cheap blade snaps off, and she tosses the hilt across the room.

  The German is bleeding profusely from several wounds, but he is not dead. He crawls across the floor now, trying to reach his Schmeisser, but his way is blocked by one of his companions, lying on his side and trying to get at the hole Rainy’s bullet left in his chest.

  Rainy smashes the bottle against the back of Mangled Ear’s head, and this time it breaks, leaving the mouth of the bottle intact, and with a single long, pointed shard of heavy green glass.

  Rainy straddles the German from behind, awkward in her bulky black dress, and stabs the shard into his jugular, then twists it back and forth, cutting deeper and deeper as warm blood flows over her hand.

  She feels the way his muscles no longer seem to be acting under conscious control. Still she saws and digs and twists until she is sure, absolutely sure, that he is dead.

  She stands back and tosses the bloody bottle aside.

  The French couple, the patron, Marie, Étienne, and Étienne’s prostitute, Marianne, all stare at her.

  Rainy retrieves her Walther, works the slide to eject the jammed round, and in French says, “Messieurs, dames, I am going to tell you what happened here. These Germans got drunk and picked a fight with a truck driver who is heading west, toward Cognac. There was a fight, the truck driver had two friends, and they killed the Germans. Is that clear?”

  No one answers.

  “Is that clear?” Rainy demands. The patron and the French couple all nod yes. Étienne’s friend is backing toward the door, looking very much as if she might scream.

  Rainy aims the Walther and BANG! shoots her in the heart. Étienne lets loose a whinny of protest.

  “Going west,” Rainy says, her voice genuinely ragged now. “Truck drivers going west toward Cognac. Stick to that story and you’ll be all right. This is maquis business, not yours. But if you betray the Resistance . . .” She lets the threat hang.

  Three minutes later they are panting and gasping in the truck and driving at average, unremarkable speed toward the east, toward the pleasant woods of the Périgord Limousin.

  “We should have taken their guns,” Étienne says, speaking for the first time.

  “No, you imbecile,” Marie rages. “We should not have stopped to see your mistress, and you should not have found a way to make her angry!”

  “If we took the guns, it’d look like maquis to the Krauts for sure,” Rainy says, her voice far calmer than her heart or brain. “Drunk truck drivers getting in a bar fight don’t take Schmeissers.”

  Silence. Then Étienne says, “You didn’t have to kill Marianne.”

  An even longer silence. Then in slow, measured, but furious tones, like slow-motion violence, Rainy says, “Your arrogance ends right here, right now, Étienne. You screwed up. You could have gotten us all arrested or killed.”

  “You have no—”

  “Shut up,” Rainy snaps. “This is my operation from here on in.”

  “We do not take orders from the American—”

  “Stop it, Étienne.” Marie’s voice, like Rainy’s, is tense and barely under control. “She’s right. You were careless. That woman died because of you. And we all nearly ended up in an SD interrogation cell! Because of you and your . . . your needs.”

  Étienne does not argue further. He continues driving and stares straight ahead.

  Rainy uses the silence to put herself back together. The crisis is always easier than the aftermath; she has learned that. In a crisis it is all about speed and decisiveness. The aftermath, the sick feeling that comes with each obsessive mental replay of digging broken glass into a man’s neck, feeling his blood, smelling it . . .

  And the hole that appeared not quite perfectly centered in the mistress’s chest.

  Her hands tremble, so she sticks them in her coat pockets. How long will it take the milice to show up on the scene? Would the SD get there first? Did the patron and the French couple have the nerve to lie to the SD?

  No. But they might just repeat what she’d said about heading west. That very small ruse might just work.

  But deep inside her a voice says, “No.”

  No, they would not convince the SD, not for five minutes. So make a plan, Rainy! They had a good ten minutes’ head start, but the SD could radio ahead, they could call in planes, they could mobilize the entire French police force as well.

  Which meant the likelihood was they are not going to make it to Limoges. That was just the reality.

  Time to hide.

  And what better place than the middle of the Das Reich division?

  “We’ve got a cargo of cognac,” Rainy says, “and a bunch of thirsty Germans somewhere around here, right? So let’s go make a sales call.”

  6

  RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEAR LIMOGES, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

  They drive the truckload of cognac and black market cigarettes around for a full day. Rainy’s thought had been to use the cognac as proof of innocence, as proof that they were just smugglers, black marketeers. Surely, she figured, surely they would be stopped at a roadblock and then could negotiate a deal for the cargo. It had seemed so terribly clever when she’d thought of it.

  They have three transport barrels of cognac, 350 liters or roughly 90 gallons each, plus 200 cartons of cigarettes of ten packs each. The Das Reich might be Nazi fanatics, but in war no one ever has enough alcohol or smokes, and Rainy is reasonably sure that an offer to sell and, crucially, a promise to return with more will get the attention of any divisional quartermaster.

  There is only one flaw in the plan: they encounter no roadblocks. Twice they pull off the road to avoid German staff cars racing by, perhaps in pursuit of them, perhaps not.

  The first night after killing the soldiers, Rainy, Étienne, and Marie sleep rough, driving the truck down a dirt track deep into the Limousin forest. Étienne and Marie sleep cramped, in the truck’s cabin, and Rainy wedges herself into a place between two of the barrels in back. It is not comfortable, not even by army standards, and she sleeps very little. When she does sleep she is kneeling beside a river of blood, washing her hands in it.

  The next morning, chilled, aching, and frowzy, they stop at a small café for coffee and croissants.

  “The croissants are good,” Rainy observes, politely saying nothing about the coffee.

  Marie says, “The coffee is merde. Chicory and roasted grain.”

  “It’s hot,” Étienne says. “Coffee is not the highest priority.”

  Rainy is not at all certain about that. She’d have paid a month’s salary—a hundred and fifty dollars—for a decent cup. But Étie
nne has been distant and defensive since the incident with his mistress or girlfriend or prostitute, whatever she was—his stories varied—and Rainy does not want to argue with him. He has not yet chosen to share with them the reason Marianne ended up chasing him down the street yelling that he was maquis.

  The people who join Resistance groups and risk death are a mixed bag, according to Colonel Herkemeier’s briefing in London. Some are committed Communists. Some are followers of General de Gaulle’s Free French. Most joined the maquis only after the Germans began shipping French citizens off to forced labor camps in Germany. There are dozens of groups under dozens of leaders, some quietly effective, some noisily useless. All are brave, that at least is clear: only a very brave person defies the Nazis.

  But as Rainy watches Étienne fuss with the croissant crumbs he’s scattered, she knows that some are also informers working either for the Germans or the collaborationist traitors of the Vichy government.

  “We should get going,” Marie says.

  “In a minute,” Étienne answers. He has taken to overruling Marie on everything, asserting his now-questionable authority, though he has not yet challenged Rainy, who has carefully avoided antagonizing him. But his continued high-handedness is definitely getting on her nerves.

  She tries to imagine a scenario in which Étienne is a traitor. Had he provoked Marianne into giving him up? Was she his contact with the Nazis? Had the two of them cooked up the little demonstration that had resulted in her death?

  But why? Why not just walk in and tell the three SS men? Why the subterfuge?

  Of course the answer is obvious: Marie. She is his sister, after all, and he might not want her to know that he’s a traitor. He could stand her thinking him a fool, but not a traitor.

  You’re talking yourself into it, Rainy, she chides herself, and you have no proof.

  They spend the morning driving along a road that is the dividing line between the Limousin forest and farm fields, and again, despite seeing unmistakable evidence of tank tracks on the side of the road, they are not stopped.

  “Any other time the Boche would have roadblocks every kilometer,” Étienne grumbles.

  “It’s an unusual situation,” Rainy allows. “Driving around and hoping to be—”

  They hit a pothole in the road and the truck swerves. When Étienne wrestles the rickety vehicle back on the road, they hear the unmistakable flapping sound of a popped tire. They pull off and sure enough, the right front tire is blown, worn rubber mangled around the rim.

  “Do you have a spare?” Rainy asks.

  Étienne laughs bitterly. “Spare tire? Why not ask for a golden chariot?”

  Rainy suppresses her irritation. Again. “Can you find a spare tire?”

  Étienne shrugs. He rolls then lights a cigarette and stands thinking ostentatiously, as Marie and Rainy hike into the woods for a quick bathroom break. When they return Étienne has a map unfolded on the hood of the truck. “Tulle is not far. We have a contact there.”

  “Maquis?” Rainy asks.

  “Communists.” He spits on the ground. “But they may help us. In any case, we have no choice.”

  They drive the truck into the forest, shredding the last of the tire in the process, and cut branches to pile against the sides as camouflage.

  “It’s five kilometers,” Étienne says. “You two wait here.”

  “I think I’d rather come with you,” Rainy says.

  Étienne is quick to understand her motive. “Do you, mademoiselle, propose to distrust me? This is not England, still less America. This is France!”

  Marie, Rainy notes, remains silent, watching.

  “It’s not a question of trust,” Rainy lies blandly. “I just don’t like waiting in the forest and not knowing.”

  In the end the three of them are able to hitch a ride on a trailer being pulled by a tractor. It means sharing a ride with a load of farm implements and sacks of manure, which does nothing to improve Rainy’s mood. They arrive at the outskirts of Tulle, wait until they are well past their destination, then jump off and double back to a small farm.

  The farmer is a gnarled, whiskered old man with a total of three teeth. He sees them, says nothing, and jerks his head toward the barn before disappearing into the stone house.

  In the barn they find two workmen, a thick-set, middle-aged man and a second man, this one in his early twenties, stripped to the waist and shoveling cow dung into a wheelbarrow held by the older man.

  The older man sees them, glances at his companion, and without a word leaves the barn. The young man’s dark eyes narrow at the sight of Étienne but widen in happy recognition of Marie.

  He starts toward her, grinning, then stops, abashed, and snatches up his shirt. He is ready to call her by name but stops himself. “Mademoiselle, it is good to see you.”

  “Marie,” she says, making a deprecating face.

  “Marie, is it?” His laugh says he knows it’s an alias. “Good choice, you could certainly be a Marie. And I suppose you must call me Philippe.”

  Hands are shaken, introductions made.

  Rainy is wary of judging a book by its cover, but her instinctive reaction is that she likes Philippe. He’s bright, alert, quick, and not at all bad-looking, though he has eyes only for Marie. Still, she remembers Étienne’s remark about Communists. The Communists, whose primary loyalty is to the party and its Moscow overlords, are not technically an enemy of the United States. Quite the contrary, President Roosevelt bends over backward to excuse Stalin’s brutality in the interests of maintaining a shaky alliance with the Communist dictator. But that, Rainy knows, is not the opinion of the military, who see the Communists as the likely next enemy, once Hitler is destroyed.

  “What brings you to Tulle?” Philippe asks, buttoning his shirt while Marie blushes.

  “Our truck blew a tire,” Étienne says. “We hoped you might be able to help.”

  “Indeed?” Philippe says. “Well, that is not so easily done. Come with me, please.”

  He leads them out the back door of the barn to a crude lean-to with a piece of canvas for a door. The roof is low and slanted, there are no windows, and the candle that Philippe lights illuminates a collapsing cot, an empty crate used as a table, and one chair.

  Philippe does not offer the chair. Instead he uses the side of his foot to scuff at the dirt floor and uncover a wooden trapdoor. He pries it up, revealing rough-hewn wooden steps. They follow him down into a cool, damp-smelling, dirt-walled cellar. By the light of a single candle, Rainy sees two men.

  And to her amazement, they are wearing uniforms. It takes her only a few seconds to realize that these are Royal Air Force uniforms, dirty, sweat-stained, and in one case bloodstained, but unmistakably RAF.

  “Gentlemen,” Philippe says, “I have the honor to introduce Mademoiselle Marie, her brother . . .” He hesitates, and Étienne says his name. “Étienne, of course. And this is Lieutenant Alice Jones, of the American army.”

  One of the Brits stands up and offers his hand. “Flight Lieutenant David Wickham, and this is my wireless operator, Sergeant Hooper. You’ll have to forgive Hooper; his knee is a bit wobbly.”

  Rainy smiles at the inevitable British understatement: the “wobbly” knee is clearly broken, and given the blood it’s a serious fracture. Hooper is not wobbly, he’s crippled.

  Hands are shaken. Hooper remains lying on a duplicate of the cots above. Neither Wickham nor Hooper can be over twenty-one, maybe twenty-two years of age. The sergeant is a slight man, with a bent nose and nervous hands.

  Flight Lieutenant Wickham looks like a recruiting poster model of an RAF flyer: tall for a pilot, with a wave of blond hair, blue eyes, a clear pale complexion, casual attitude, and an accent that speaks of good schools.

  He reminds Rainy uncomfortably of her brother, Aryeh, a Marine fighting in the South Pacific. Uncomfortable because any thought of Aryeh comes with anxiety. And uncomfortable, too, because she finds herself attracted to Wickham, and that is not a tho
ught that should occupy the same mental space as “reminds me of my brother.”

  “They were shot down near Strasbourg,” Philippe says. “They have been brought this far, and now we await an opportunity to move them south, into Spain, where they can be repatriated.”

  Wickham grins sheepishly and says, “I’m very much afraid that I strayed right into the path of German ack-ack.” Then he frowns. “Everyone jumped, but we became separated after coming down. Our French friends have been sheltering us ever since. Three weeks now. May I ask, Lieutenant, what news of the war?”

  The cellar is little more than a hole in the ground, with a plank ceiling low enough to force the six-foot-tall Wickham to crouch slightly. There is a wine rack holding a dozen bottles. A quarter of the room is filled with a pile of charcoal.

  Rainy sits on the end of Wickham’s cot. Philippe gallantly brings a chair down from above for Marie. Étienne leans against a battered china cabinet that holds a radio on its top.

  “I don’t know anything about the war that you don’t know,” Rainy says. “The Russians are on the move. General Clark took Rome.”

  “And the invasion?” Wickham asks.

  “We wait constantly on news of the war,” Philippe says. “We expect the signal any day now. Any hour.” He looks questioningly at Rainy.

  Rainy shrugs. She has no specific information on the date or time of the invasion. But the fact that she has been sent to spy on the Das Reich, and that her operational plan involves exfiltrating in ten days, suggests strongly that it is coming very soon. “General Eisenhower seldom consults me for my advice,” she says dryly, earning a laugh from Wickham and a nod from Philippe.

  “Information must always be compartmentalized,” Étienne says somewhat pompously. Rainy watches Philippe carefully for his reaction. He minimizes but cannot entirely conceal a dislike for Étienne. Is that because he does not trust Étienne? Is it because he simply does not like his tone of voice? Or is it perhaps that Étienne is a protective big brother to Marie, in whom Philippe is clearly interested?